Tom Roche

Deputy AHP Lead, KCL Older Persons Fellow, Lincolnshire based, CrossFit, History, Politics, Allotment.

[Ben Goldsmith @BenGoldsmith]

It is quite simply a battle of good versus evil, and it’s forever unforgettable quite how many people in our own western societies cheered the wrong side 🍉

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

Yes we opposed it. It’s a TERRIBLE policy.

It has forced schools to shut, sending 1000s of pupils into state schools that are now struggling for space, teachers and money you didn’t account for.

And you said 'every penny' would go into state schools... but now it’s housing?

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

I thought the VAT from school fees was to go on state schools? Not housing. You can’t even get your lies straight.
By the way what’s the latest estimate of how much the VAT will raise minus the cost of those leaving private education for the state system? Enough to build a cottage or two?
I see in another tweet you’re still claiming to preside over the fastest growing economy in G7. Has nobody told you the economy contracted by 0.3% in April?

[𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 🇮🇷 ✡︎ @NiohBerg]

🔴 BREAKING:

Thom Yorke of Radiohead takes a refreshing stand against the one sided and unquestioning "Free Palestine" trend among artists.

"Why have the hostages still not all been returned? For what possible reason?"

[Stephen Pollard @stephenpollard]

Here's my @spectator column on Bridget Phillipson:

"Congratulations are due to the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson. Not many ministers achieve much at all, let alone achieving the core of their agenda within a year of taking office. But figures to be released this week, which show that over 13,000 children have had to leave private schools over the past academic year, are merely the latest confirmation that Phillipson is well on her way to achieving what she set out to do when she took office. Phillipson can already boast that she is the most destructive education secretary since 1979.

One assumes that has been her aim since being appointed last July, given that she has spent the past ten months doing everything in her power to destroy two of the most successful elements in British education – private schools and academy schools. It is, after all, difficult to discern any other purpose to the wrecking ball she has directed at both.

Credit where it is due, Phillipson is a skilled saboteur. In opposition, there were any number of flattering profiles portraying her as the bright, modern face of Labour. In office she has sought to maintain that image, whilst in reality pursuing policies straight out of a well-thumbed guide to the 1970s, the last era when an education secretary deliberately set out to destroy good schools. Back then it was Shirley Williams, whose mission was to finish off grammar schools. For Phillipson, it is private and academy schools which are the target."

https://t.co/5o16mnKdX2

[Stephen Pollard @stephenpollard]

A shame Israel didn't win #Eurovision - so close - but wow, Yuval Raphael is an inspiration.
For the second year running the audience vote has shown they have no truck with the Jew haters' calls for boycotts.
The haters make a lot of noise but they speak for no one but themselves.
As Yuval said:
Am Israel Chai!

[Dr. Maalouf ‏ @realMaalouf]

This is how the public of each European country, Australia, and the rest of the world voted in the Eurovision final.

Remember, social media is not real life.

[Bella Wallersteiner 🇺🇦 @BellaWallerstei]

More than 13,000 pupils have already left private schools thanks to Labour’s school fee tax (@thetimes) - over four times government’s own forecast. That’s 13,000 extra pupils in an overstretched state system as a result of class war policy

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

“I’ve been in touch with Kneecap and they’ve now agreed to watch Adolescence to avoid jail.”

[Tom Roche @TPRochie]

Our government ladies and gentlemen. . .

[Robert Jenrick @RobertJenrick]

Happy Easter!

We may carry faith lightly in this country, but the natural reserve of the British character should not prevent us from acknowledging that this is a culturally Christian country, the product of a millennium and more of Christian life on the British Isles, and that the values, customs and traditions that has given us should be cherished and handed on by Christians and non-Christians alike.

It is a peculiar quirk of British politics that so few seem willing to acknowledge that we are a Christian country, with Christian values, built upon and in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Last week Downing Street’s social media accounts bombarded the country with an endless volley of happy such-and-suches. Happy Nepali New Year! Happy Shubho Noboborsho! Happy Vaisakhi! Happy Mahavir Jayanti! And so it went on. But for days there was no mention of the start of Holy Week for millions of Christians.

You can imagine the press officer, ticking off their checklist: “have we said “happy X?” or “happy Y?”. There was no interest in the inner life of faith, just its political and electoral repercussions.

This is a classic example of asymmetrical multiculturalism, where minority cultures are celebrated and promoted – while majority traditions and festivals are ignored and subsumed into empty cosmopolitanism. This thinking led to a primary school scrapping an Easter parade and church service in the name of inclusivity.

The result is that the unifying and over-arching national identity that generates belonging frays. British Christians – who still make up the single largest demographic group (in the last census 46 per cent of people said they were Christians, far exceeding the next highest religion at just 6.5 per cent) – are led to feel estranged from their own country.

We have much to thank Christianity for. The principle of political liberty derives from the Christian foundations of our political institutions and political philosophy. Our laws and what we now call human rights, have that origin too.

Indeed, the very concept of the secular space, in which people are free to believe anything or nothing, has its roots in the Christian principle that everybody has value, and that it is not right to pry into the souls of other men or women.

But it is unsurprising that mainstream figures are squeamish about our Christian heritage when the Church of England seems to have lost its self-confidence. Interfaith dialogue is to be welcomed, but some church leaders appear more interested in filling their church with an Open Iftar than filling the pews for their own Sunday service.

The role of the church in our national heritage has been neglected. Parishes churches are the golden thread which connects centuries or more of religious and social life. They are more than just places of worship - they are depositories of our island story. But they are closing at an alarming rate. 1,000 are now at risk. The closure of an ancient church barely makes the local newspaper these days, something our ancestors would have been astonished by.

Politics pays little regard to such concerns. Labour have slashed the tax relief for repairs to listed places of worship and done so abruptly, casting doubt on works already underway. My church, St Mary Magdalene in Newark – a 12th century wonder complete with cannon ball scars from the civil war – already had the scaffolding on site when Rachel Reeves pulled the plug. It’s vandalising our cultural inheritance.

The lack of interest in our Christian roots manifests itself abroad too. On Psalm Sunday dozens of Christians were massacred by Jihadists in Nigeria. Before the Syrian civil war there are estimated to have been over two million Christians living there. Less than 300,00 survive. There will be no marches through London protesting the erasure of Christian life in the Middle East.

This Easter, I will be thinking of those who are unable to celebrate their faith’s most important festival with their families.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

The nauseating hypocrisy of E Miliband is jaw-dropping. He and his kind across the political class — Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, SNP — promoted the very energy policies that lumbered Britain with the highest industrial energy costs in the world, making industries like steel uneconomic. They tolerated no dissent from their net zero nonsense even as deindustrialisation gathered pace. And now Miliband has the audacity to pose as the saviour of British steelworkers! In truth, the British political class has shamefully failed them, none more so than net zero zealot Miliband.

[Christopher Snowdon @cjsnowdon]

Phase 1: “The rich won’t emigrate if you tax them more. That’s just scaremongering.”

Phase 2: “The rich are only emigrating because they’re greedy.”

Phase 3: “The rich have emigrated. Good riddance!”

[Dan Hitchens @ddhitchens]

Ten worst moments of the assisted suicide bill committee stage:

[Tim Farron @timfarron]

Lots of MPs voted for the bill at 2nd reading in the expectation that there would be stronger safeguards added at committee stage… and yet we now see that even the weak safeguards that existed, are being dropped.

[Tom Roche @TPRochie]

First time in my life I have agreed with Diane Abbott!

[Diane Abbott @HackneyAbbott]

Safeguards on the Assisted Dying Bill are collapsing. Rushed, badly thought out legislation. Needs to be voted down. https://t.co/jjsHvRne0k

[Diane Abbott @HackneyAbbott]

Safeguards on the Assisted Dying Bill are collapsing. Rushed, badly thought out legislation. Needs to be voted down. https://t.co/jjsHvRne0k

[Sharron Davies HoL MBE @sharrond62]

Come on bbc… if someone murdered or tries to murder whole families including children & young people at a music concert they are not hostages they are prisoners. Swapping child hostages for murders isn’t quite hostage exchange!

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

I've never shared this story publicly but let me do so now. When my parents were kidnapped by Fatah, they separated my parents. When they were mistreating them and forcing them to confess to insane things, my mother said to her torturers: "Go ask my husband if you don't believe me." They laughed and said that he had already gone to meet his G-d. Hence, my mother had to deal with knowing that they had supposedly killed him. Later on, while in her cell alone, she heard a unique cough that my dad has (which I also have). She thought that she might have been hallucinating but then realized that he might be alive. If I shared all of the horrors of my past, you'd know which side to be on.

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

I’ll never forgive or forget that the BBC happily referred to convicted Palestinian terrorists as “hostages” but completely refused to refer to Hamas as terrorists.